


Holes (King AU)

by SimplySyra



Series: Blood on Gold Kings [30]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Achievement City, Achievement Hunters, Alternate Universe - Achievement Hunter Kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 02:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplySyra/pseuds/SimplySyra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve, and I have always buried them deep beneath the ground. Dig them up; Let's finish what we started. -"Flaws" by Bastille</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holes (King AU)

The wind comes shrieking out of the east, unnaturally cold and heavily laden with the sick-sweet stench of putrefied flesh. The temple-keeper hobbles out from the cool darkness of the sanctuary and his weathered skin crawls across fragile, shuddering bones when he looks to the sky and sees the sun obscured by a great black shadow that writhes and turns like oil on water.

Ravens. Thousands of them. Their harsh rasping voices scraping across the late-winter skies.

“He cometh. "Withered fingers reflexively form the sign of the Maker across his chest.

He. The Carrion King. Called this because his arrival was heralded by the monstrous cloud of ravens that trailed him from one grisly feast of flesh to the next. Entire towns destroyed, their inhabitants picked down to the bone by hard yellow beaks.

They settle now, inundating the streets in a dry, rustling landscape of feathers that glisten dully in the darkness of over a thousand wings. Innumerable eyes glint savagely, blinking from sharp scavenger skulls like a sea of broken glass beads. Dread rolls through the town on a thick bank of fog. Silence ticks by, notching seconds into hearts nearly too afraid to beat.

Yet when his figure materializes out of the mist and the shadow, their fear turns to bewilderment. This is no monster. No hulking, towering beast. This is a man in a tattered black cloak, leather boots run ripped and ragged by leagues of lonely travel. 

And though he carries a sword, eerily black, he is but a single solitary figure traversing the wide empty wilderness outside of their tiny village gates.

What harm could one man bring upon a village of many? Even a man so regal, with a face like cut marble and a crown, slightly tilted, glinting proud and gold. What can one man do?

He shows them.

The cloak flies off, baring the bruised and brutal hole where once beat a living, feeling heart. It glistens now, black and purple, slick with the sickness of decay.

Then he is upon them like a storm upon the ocean. Sword spraying blood like sea-salt across the undulating tide of their terror. Breaking their bones like the crackling timbers of a capsizing ship. He seethes and rages, churning their breath into a rusty pink froth, smashing their bodies like waves against the unbreaking shore.

The ravens gurgle and croak, dancing on eager claws through the hot and crimson downpour of his fury.

He is standing, sword raised, over the trembling figure of the temple-keeper when a light brighter than the sun descends from the sky with a thunder clap like rain upon the drought-scorched earth. A voice that breaks like dawn after a long starless night washes across the gore-soaked earth in a surging golden swell.

"Whose heart do you thirst for, Mad One? Leave them be.”

The Mad King turns, powerful frame shrouded in a whispering, wintry dark that mutters and slithers across the ground. His eyes echo like hollow chasms and he bares his teeth in a hungry grin like a fist full of knives.

“I wondered when you would show,” he murmurs, licking someone else’s blood from the corner of his mouth. “I figured I could only destroy so many towns housing your effigy before you took notice.”

“I have given you more leeway than I would have most,” sighs the Maker, voice heavy and dusted in stars. “But the time has come to cease your senseless rampage.”

“A tempting offer, and yet, strangely enough, not nearly as palatable than my current endeavor.”

“I am offering you the opportunity to sate your endless desire for brutality. And, more than that, the chance to take up your blade against mine. You have heard of my Game.”

“Yes,” says the Mad One, hoisting the dripping black blade to his shoulder. “I shall come. But know that you will regret this decision. For I am the hole in your heart where once there sat love and pride.”

“Why,” says the Maker, eyes glimmering like strange underwater planets, “do you assume that my heart is empty? You of all people should know of the things we hide in the holes that life has wrought.”


End file.
